Organizations increasingly rely on virtualization technologies to improve the flexibility, efficiency, and stability of their data centers. One aspect of virtualization involves provisioning virtual machines with virtual disks for data storage.
Virtual disks, like physical disks, may have unallocated space (e.g., unformatted disk regions) and/or unused space (e.g., formatted but unused). By preallocating large quantities of space for a virtual disk file on a host system, an administrator may provide storage space for a guest system that uses the corresponding virtual disk as a storage resource.
System administrators may sometimes migrate and/or replicate data volumes from one location to another in order to increase reliability, perform system maintenance, manage system resources, or improve performance. In some cases, an administrator may synchronize volumes that include virtual disk files. Unfortunately, synchronizing large virtual disk files may consume a significant amount of computing resources, including disk input/output resources, network bandwidth, and/or processing resources. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for systems and methods for virtual disk usage transparency.